informing digital era ambitions

Link Collection — November 11, 2012

“Dremel is a scalable, interactive ad-hoc query system for analysis of read-only nested data. By combining multi-level execution trees and columnar data layout, it is capable of running aggregation queries over trillion-row tables in seconds. The system scales to thousands of CPUs and petabytes of data, and has thousands of users at Google. In this paper, we describe the architecture and implementation of Dremel, and explain how it complements MapReduce-based computing.”

“After a long period of intense engineering effort and user feedback, we are very pleased, and proud, to announce the Cloudera Impala project. This technology is a revolutionary one for Hadoop users, and we do not take that claim lightly.

When Google published its Dremel paper in 2010, we were as inspired as the rest of the community by the technical vision to bring real-time, ad hoc query capability to Apache Hadoop, complementing traditional MapReduce batch processing. Today, we are announcing a fully functional, open-sourced codebase that delivers on that vision – and, we believe, a bit more – which we call Cloudera Impala.”

“On Nov. 4, a group of senior campaign advisers agreed to describe their cutting-edge efforts with TIME on the condition that they not be named and that the information not be published until after the winner was declared. What they revealed as they pulled back the curtain was a massive data effort that helped Obama raise $1 billion, remade the process of targeting TV ads and created detailed models of swing-state voters that could be used to increase the effectiveness of everything from phone calls and door knocks to direct mailings and social media.”

“In-memory computing is a core element of Microsoft’s strategy to deliver a data platform that enables customers to analyze all types of data while also accelerating time to insight. Our approach to in-memory computing is to provide a complete portfolio for all application patterns, built into our existing products that enable rapid insights on any data, structured or unstructured. We’ve been delivering advanced in-memory technologies as part of SQL Server since 2010. Since then, we have shipped more than 1.5 million units to customers, making it the most pervasive data platform of its kind with in-memory technologies built in.

Furthering Microsoft’s commitment to deliver in-memory solutions as part of our data platform, today we are introducing Project codenamed “Hekaton,” available in the next major release of SQL Server. Currently in private technology preview with a small set of customers, “Hekaton” will complete Microsoft’s portfolio of in-memory capabilities across analytics and transactional scenarios. It will provide breakthrough performance gains of up to 50 times, and because it will be built into SQL Server, customers won’t need to buy specialized hardware or software and will be able to easily migrate existing applications to benefit from the dramatic gains in performance.”

“The researchers used techniques known to induce an abstract mindset in people, Preston said. Previous studies had shown that asking people to think broadly about a subject (with “why” rather than “how” questions, for example) makes it easier for them to look at an issue from different perspectives.
” ‘Why’ questions make people think more in terms of the big picture, more in terms of intentions and goals, whereas more concrete ‘how’ questions are focused on something very specific, something right in front of you, basically,” Preston said.
Previous research showed that abstract thinking enhances creativity and open-mindedness, but this is the first study to test its power to moderate political beliefs, Preston said.”

“Silver, the computer expert who gave Obama a 90 percent chance of winning re-election, predicted on his blog, FiveThirtyEight (for the number of seats in the Electoral College), that the president would receive 51 percent of the popular vote as he called each of the 50 states, including all nine battlegrounds.”

“Some milestone moments in journalism converged 60 years ago on election night in the run between Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower and Democratic Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson. It was the first coast-to-coast television broadcast of a presidential election. Walter Cronkite anchored his first election night broadcast for CBS.

And it was the first time computers were brought in to help predict the outcome. That event in 1952 helped usher in the computer age, but it wasn’t exactly love at first sight…”